dev1069 Phantom Roll Effect Adjustments feedback

[Greatguardian]

A fair point, but it only brings up an equally distressing problem. Those of us here who understand how Defense works have been fairly consistent in our evaluation of the usefulness of this roll and Defense as a stat with the current limitations in place on player characters (namely 1.0 lower bound on monster cRatio). We've brought up very specific problems that arise when using Defense at all, namely:

- Lower bound on cRatio causes players to quickly "tap out" or plateau in terms of damage mitigation from defense

- High attack values on notorious monsters make Defense worthless without extreme stacking as the gains from defense at high monster cRatio are minimal at best.

The Defense vs Damage Mitigation curve for players is an exponential curve, as opposed to the logarithmic curve used by Attack vs Damage dealt. This means that Defense is only ever worthwhile when it is stacked to the extreme. In combination with this, the game specifically prevents us from stacking to the extreme by placing a lower bound on monster cRatio (Essentially cutting off the most potent end of the curve).

Damage mitigation as a function of Defense (For Players) looks something like this:



As it stands, most players can never bring themselves out of the far-left range on powerful monsters without extreme stacking of defensive gear and buffs. Likewise, when they finally do break out of that range, the curve instantly cuts off at 1.0 cRatio before the players are able to gain truly meaningful defensive benefits from Defense.

While explaining the basics of Defense to people who don't understand it is a noble venture, it does nothing to address the inherent flaws of the Defense stat. It's fine to say "Hey, Defense gets better when you have more of it!", which would be true (And is true for monsters!), but so long as monsters are given a "Free pass" on floored cRatio, Defense will never be able to be stacked high enough for it to be worth a buff slot.

[MarkovChain]

Those of us here who understand how Defense works

Kay, I'll make it simple neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit about how defense work. The pdif formula that have been used for years are notoriously wrong. Secondly a lower cap on pdif isn't excatly informative on how defense work since what matter is only the distribution between low and max damage received. Even when pdif has a lower cap the average damage taken is still partwise linear as a function of cratio and therefore as function of 1/DEF. It means that while static defense gear is technically losing power, stuff like defender is exactly as useful regardless of def.




You also said that high level monster have so much attack that stacking def may not be useful due to having a lower cap. This is definitely not true. What's not true is "the high attack part" being responsible for it. For instance you can do this simple test on monk against chigoes. With countestance and no gear you basically defense free :

your defense = 40 => 117,... damage taken on average
your defense = 54 => 107,... damage taken on average
your defense= 95 => 60,.... damage taken on average



Stacking def is actually beneficial but in your case (HNMs) the problem is not their attack but the level difference term.

[Yinnyth]

neither you nor anyone else knows jack shit

Kettle. Pot. Black.